Reasoning as Gradient: Scaling MLE Agents Beyond Tree Search

arXiv:2603.01692v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: LLM-based agents for machine learning engineering (MLE) predominantly rely on tree search, a form of gradient-free optimization that uses scalar validation scores to rank candidates. As LLM reasoning capabilities improve, exhaustive enumeration becomes increasingly inefficient compared to directed updates, analogous to how accurate gradients enable efficient descent over random search. We introduce Gome, an MLE agent that operationalizes